Googling BP

As we become more dependent on the internet for news and search sites such as google, bing and yahoo, we also become more susceptible to manipulation of said sources. We have seen google bombing in the past (remember the search term "miserable failure" used to lead to Bush's biography on the White House web site...ironically, the search term pointed to Obama's biography for a little while since they just swapped biographies on the same page when he took office...this google bomb has been defused).

Well, BP isn't being quite that sleazy, but they are buying placement. Fortunately, their results appear in sponsored links so people that are not totally clueless about the internet know its a paid ad. Go ahead and type in phrases like "oil spill" or "BP oil spill" to get the link to BP's site. Either takes gets you the ad on google. On Bing, "oil spill" gets the ad but "BP oil spill" does not. On Yahoo, they both work.

Not to be outdone, anyone care to guess what you get if you type in something like "oil spill lawsuit"? Of course you get BP's site saying why you should not sue them. On Bing and Google, you get ads for lawyers!

I don't have a huge problem with the PR efforts as long as they are clearly labeled as sponsored links (I even saw a friend on facebook advocate clicking these links repeatedly because it costs them money each time someone does...I think that is too much effort for too little effect but that's just me).

Just another warning that there are lots of people out there on the internet trying to steer you to their sites.